But I have always – ever since The Accidental Woman – written novels about individuals attempting to make choices in the context of situations over which they have no control.

If you‘re going to write a book that might, in its very best accidental career, sell 30,000 copies, you’ve got to have a day job.

Shake Shack started off as a summer hot dog cart in Madison Square Park. It was not meant to be a company – it was completely accidental. It started off as an expression of community building.

It’s not accidental that products get worse over time; it’s because companies stop paying attention to them. They stop caring as much about maintaining the same quality they did when they were just trying to fight for survival and no one would pay attention unless they had the best technology.

I look back – I think I am an accidental actor.

Hydraulic fracturing requires massive amounts of water. Disposing of the toxic wastewater, as well as accidental spills, can contaminate drinking water and harm human health.

Oh, am I a feminist? I usually say that I was an accidental feminist. Really, I was just being me.

My son Andrew was an extraordinary young man, loved and admired by all who knew him. His accidental death is a terrible tragedy.

New developments in weapon systems during the 1950s and early 1960s created a situation that was most dangerous, and even conducive to accidental war.

I was an accidental model. One day I was asked to me a model by a neighbor who was short on models. Then I got into TV.

I look back – I think I am an accidental actor.

Accidents, try to change them – it’s impossible. The accidental reveals man.

I’m an accidental business person. I just love the medium. I love the Internet.

It is not accidental that all phenomena of human life are dominated by the search for daily bread – the oldest link connecting all living things, man included, with the surrounding nature.

I’ve become an accidental anthropologist.

Pure geometrical regularity gives a certain pleasure to men troubled by the obscurity of outside appearance. The geometrical line is something absolutely distinct from the messiness, the confusion, and the accidental details of existing things.

Safe storage and child access prevention laws are critical steps as we seek to reduce the occurrence of accidental shootings and suicides involving guns.

When McGwire started the home run mania, attendance came back. The owners understood that the sudden spike in homers wasn’t accidental. All baseball knew it. But baseball is run on money, and home runs meant money. Baseball turned a blind eye.

Juggling many projects and having all these accidental collisions that you can’t predict enables a kind of comparative thinking. To focus on a single project from beginning to end is extremely difficult, not just for me, but for many people.

Nothing is accidental in the universe – this is one of my Laws of Physics – except the entire universe itself, which is Pure Accident, pure divinity.

Michael Jackson is an accidental civil rights leader – an accidental pioneer. He broke ground and barriers in so many different realms in artistry, in pictures, in movies, in music, you name it.

I’m an accidental writer.

New developments in weapon systems during the 1950s and early 1960s created a situation that was most dangerous, and even conducive to accidental war.

I like mathematics because it is not human and has nothing particular to do with this planet or with the whole accidental universe – because, like Spinoza‘s God, it won’t love us in return.

Accidents, try to change them – it’s impossible. The accidental reveals man.

In our culture, the shame about accidental pregnancy is inextricable from the shame about having had sex. That disapproval of sex is one reason our record with contraception is so poor. If you’re not supposed to be sexual, you don’t plan for sex. You cross your fingers and hope for the best.

From a personal standpoint, I consider myself much more of an accidental entrepreneur. I was involved in the entrepreneurship club at Harvard, but I heard of it only because it was new on campus.

Ramona was originally an accidental character I added to the Henry Huggins books because I noticed that none of the characters had siblings. I added Ramona as Beazus’ pestering little sister.

Safe storage and child access prevention laws are critical steps as we seek to reduce the occurrence of accidental shootings and suicides involving guns.

I was an accidental banker. To please my parents, I went for an interview with Chase Manhattan Bank in 1983. They promised to send me into their offices in more than 40 countries and essentially audit the practices. It was an extraordinary job.

I’ve become sort of an accidental advocate for attachment parenting, which is a style of parenting that… basically, the way mammals parent and the way people have parented for pretty much all of human history except the last 200 years or so.

I define myself as the accidental entrepreneur.

I still think my whole career was accidental. I didn’t pursue it. I feel like I’m cheating sometimes.

I don’t believe that if you do good, good things will happen. Everything is completely accidental and random. Sometimes bad things happen to very good people and sometimes good things happen to bad people. But at least if you try to do good things, then you’re spending your time doing something worthwhile.

I define myself as the accidental entrepreneur.

Hydraulic fracturing requires massive amounts of water. Disposing of the toxic wastewater, as well as accidental spills, can contaminate drinking water and harm human health.

I don’t like accidental success. It’s what Bill Gates calls ‘random,’ a term he uses with the opposite of respect.

Boys are easy. I mean, there are just a lot of bruises when they’re young. With boys, you get a lot of accidental jabs in the eye and stepping on your feet, and those tantrums they cause when they don’t want to leave the toy store.

Production and consumption of carbohydrates is so well regulated that there is a constant blood sugar level; any accidental increase or fall in blood sugar is rapidly compensated.

I’ve become an accidental anthropologist.

The attempted assassinations against me were not accidental.

I’m always interested in the moment when lives somehow accidentally cross. I think sometimes those accidental meetings can be small miracles; they can really change one’s perspective on that moment and on life.

The No. 1 cause of preventable death for young black men is not auto accidents or accidental drowning, but homicide.

I want to make words out of life. That’s bigger than me. That’s as big a creative force as – bigger than, for me, even having children. That felt more accidental – wonderful, but accidental.

Musical accidents are a gold mine. The thing about accidental discoveries is they won’t be made unless you put yourself in a position to make that discovery. To do that means hundreds of hours, days and weeks where you do things and don’t discover anything.

There’s something pure about our bloodline: There are no accidental kids of gay parents. Every single gay parent desperately, passionately wanted to be a parent. That’s neat, and I hope we can keep it that way.

Nothing is accidental in the universe – this is one of my Laws of Physics – except the entire universe itself, which is Pure Accident, pure divinity.

When an action is once done, it is right or wrong for ever; no accidental failure of its good or evil fruits can possibly alter that.

I do think there is a link between the accidental art the sciences produce and the deliberate art the artist creates, but I can’t help feeling that the innocence of the accidental art of science has a power and curious beauty that artists are hard-pressed to match.

Though direction was always on my mind, scripting was accidental.

Parties are organised happiness but happiness is accidental. You can’t legislate for it.

Things don’t just happen in this world of arising and passing away. We don’t live in some kind of crazy, accidental universe. Things happen according to certain laws, laws of nature. Laws such as the law of karma, which teaches us that as a certain seed gets planted, so will that fruit be.

That’s something that is almost accidental at the beginning of a career, but the more you write, the more trained you are to recognize the little signals.

Though direction was always on my mind, scripting was accidental.

Pure geometrical regularity gives a certain pleasure to men troubled by the obscurity of outside appearance. The geometrical line is something absolutely distinct from the messiness, the confusion, and the accidental details of existing things.

It’s not accidental that products get worse over time; it’s because companies stop paying attention to them. They stop caring as much about maintaining the same quality they did when they were just trying to fight for survival and no one would pay attention unless they had the best technology.

I went to my first CMA Music Fest when I was 14 and waited in line for two hours to meet two people: Taylor Swift and Hillary Scott from Lady Antebellum. It’s very ironic but not accidental that those two people refer to me as their ‘little sister‘ now.

When an action is once done, it is right or wrong for ever; no accidental failure of its good or evil fruits can possibly alter that.

Things don’t just happen in this world of arising and passing away. We don’t live in some kind of crazy, accidental universe. Things happen according to certain laws, laws of nature. Laws such as the law of karma, which teaches us that as a certain seed gets planted, so will that fruit be.

‘Bubba Ho-Tep’ was an accidental story that turned out to be my first film adaptation, and it’s still going strong in story and film.

One of the accidental joys of my writing life has been that I’ve had some lovely, surprisingly good fortune with readers, and I’ve brought readers to my dad‘s work. I can’t tell you the joy that gives me. Because my father‘s work was masterful.

Mysticism is the mistake of an accidental and individual symbol for an universal one.

The American fantasy of love is the ‘meet-cute,’ ‘Love at first sight,’ and ‘You had me at hello!’ The completely spontaneous version of accidental love, which doesn’t care about demographics and social compatibility.

I wish, naturally to prevent the possibility that someone may write an accidental, superficial, incomplete and perhaps untrue picture of me.

The totally convinced and the totally stupid have too much in common for the resemblance to be accidental.

I don’t want anyone to get seriously hurt. But I do watch awards shows to critique the clothes while I sit around eating chips in my sweat pants and in hopes of seeing some hilarious accidental nudity.

It is not accidental that all phenomena of human life are dominated by the search for daily bread – the oldest link connecting all living things, man included, with the surrounding nature.

My translation work has been pretty separate from my fiction, as it was basically an accidental side project that turned into a separate and parallel career.

I’m an accidental writer.

It’s not an accident that both my sister and I are writers. Our parents created an accidental Petri dish. My family has great storytellers, and I grew up in a very funny, conversational house and didn’t have television. This small family farm was a bubble world that didn’t have much to do with reality.

I wish, naturally to prevent the possibility that someone may write an accidental, superficial, incomplete and perhaps untrue picture of me.

Is anything accidental?

From a personal standpoint, I consider myself much more of an accidental entrepreneur. I was involved in the entrepreneurship club at Harvard, but I heard of it only because it was new on campus.

I like the accidental nature of being in the real world.

The American fantasy of love is the ‘meet-cute,’ ‘Love at first sight,’ and ‘You had me at hello!’ The completely spontaneous version of accidental love, which doesn’t care about demographics and social compatibility.

The domestic lives we live – which may be accidental, or not entirely of our making – help to make possible our writing lives; our imaginations are freed, or stimulated, by the very prospect of companionship, quiet, a predictable and consoling routine.

That’s something that is almost accidental at the beginning of a career, but the more you write, the more trained you are to recognize the little signals.

I still think my whole career was accidental. I didn’t pursue it. I feel like I’m cheating sometimes.

The aspiring tyrants of today have not forgotten the lesson of 1933: that acts of terror – real or fake, provoked or accidental – can provide the occasion to deal a death blow to democracy.

Shake Shack started off as a summer hot dog cart in Madison Square Park. It was not meant to be a company – it was completely accidental. It started off as an expression of community building.

I’ve become sort of an accidental advocate for attachment parenting, which is a style of parenting that… basically, the way mammals parent and the way people have parented for pretty much all of human history except the last 200 years or so.

I don’t believe that if you do good, good things will happen. Everything is completely accidental and random. Sometimes bad things happen to very good people and sometimes good things happen to bad people. But at least if you try to do good things, then you’re spending your time doing something worthwhile.

Most political wives are accidental politicians.

President Karzai was an accidental president. There was no paradigm for the conditions he faced, because no one could have imagined 9/11. He had to improvise under very difficult conditions to hold this country together.

NASA, and all the other spacefaring nations of the world, have agreed to a set of ‘planetary-protection’ principles, aimed at preventing the accidental contamination of another habitable world with organisms from Earth.

I am an accidental actor.

When McGwire started the home run mania, attendance came back. The owners understood that the sudden spike in homers wasn’t accidental. All baseball knew it. But baseball is run on money, and home runs meant money. Baseball turned a blind eye.

All my books are accidental books – they come from reacting to things and thinking about things and engaging in a real way. They are not about, ‘Oh, did it get a good review in the Guardian?’ I don’t care.

I don’t think you can separate a place from its history. I think a place is much more than the bricks and mortar that go into its construction. I think it’s more than the accidental topography of the ground it stands on.

Parties are organised happiness but happiness is accidental. You can’t legislate for it.

Sadly, all good things must come to an end, and ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer‘ wound up teaching me another, accidental lesson: that sometimes you’re so excited to keep going down the road you’re on, you drive right past your destination.

The accidental causes of science are only accidents relatively to the intelligence of a man.

The lion‘s share of what I hear right now are people who, intentional or accidental, have avoided all jazz prior to 1960. And all the musicians who were successful in the ’60s spent their entire lives, prior to 1960, listening to all the musicians these people avoid.

You might call me an accidental entrepreneur.

In fact, I heard Bird first, and had got well into listening to him. You know, it’s the kind of accidental thing that awareness of a player is: what’s available, what somebody happens to play for you.

I was an accidental model. One day I was asked to me a model by a neighbor who was short on models. Then I got into TV.

I’m an accidental entrepreneur.

It is the artist’s function not to copy but to synthesise: to eliminate from that gross confusion of actuality which is his raw material whatever is accidental, idle, irrelevant, and select for perpetuation that only which is appropriate and immortal.

In fact, I heard Bird first, and had got well into listening to him. You know, it’s the kind of accidental thing that awareness of a player is: what’s available, what somebody happens to play for you.